What my CPTSD nightmares area teaching me about my narcissistically abusive family

 Hi friends. Lots of discovery going on around here about the narcissistic abuse and neglect I was raised with. And there's one really helpful source that might surprise you as it has me: My chronic CPTSD nightmares. Seeking help for these was what got me looking at things more clearly.  Here's what trauma dreams teach me about my abusive family. 

So what we know about CPTSD is that it's like combat-related PTSD only more complex because it stems from early childhood trauma. One symptom I don't hear much about is nightmares. We know they're part of shell shock. But there's not a lot of mention of them related to CPTSD. Maybe because few people have them, or have them like I do. 

I've never heard of anyone having dreams like mine. When I ask, I get responses like "everyone has bad dreams." Or they say they understand because they had one bad dream months ago. Which is patronizing and not very helpful. Because I know everyone dreams and clearly I wouldn't have brought it up if mine were normal and occasional. And dismissively gaslighting because it denies my reality of constant, nightly disturbing nightmares or likens one bad one to a lifetime of bad dream memory. 

The point isn't to fault people for not understanding. Though being sensitive and supportive goes a lot farther than dismissing. And maybe they're not pooh-poohing. I only think they are because I was shamed for having bad dreams, gaslit that it wasn't that bad and that I was showing off. Which is probably where a lot of the nightmares stem. And so because I was not taken seriously, I learned to downplay it. I began gaslighting myself. And my dreams join in.  

And in a way, hearing what they consider bad dreams is helpful because it shows that very few people have dreams like mine and so regularly. When I tell them mine, they instantly recant and say they've never experienced anything like this nor know of anyone who has. They say they couldn't invent dreams like this let alone imagine how awful it must be to have them. Which is both scary and affirming that I'm not making it up and they're that bad. 

Because my dreams aren't just about bad things happening to me. They are about bad things I believe I have done. And good things I'm failing to do. I always have a mountain of expectations I'm not meeting. I don't even know what they are. I'm trying to care for everyone's kids, do laundry, cook, clean and care for everyone. The environment is dirty and unsafe. I'm wading through garbage. There are feces and urine everywhere. Children get hurt in terrible ways because I didn't even know I was supposed to be watching them. I don't have the resources and don't know where things are. I'm always late. 

I feel terrible guilt and fear. People are angry with me and won't tell me why. I've done unspeakably bad things but I don't know what they are. My kids hate me and my husband cheats on me. I'm left behind. I'm lost, alone, hungry, exhausted and cold, a lot.  And it goes on and on.  This is a very small sample of what I go through each night. It doesn't matter what I eat or drink. Where or when I sleep. What I do or don't do. The dreams are relentless. 

So another thing I'm learning from my nightmares is that you don't dream like this without there being a reason. And what they're telling me is that my childhood really was as disturbingly dysfunctional as I'm now accepting it was.  So mind-blowingly disturbing that my trauma damaged brain must rehash it every single night all night long. And why is that? Why does my brain put me through this? 

My parents would say that it was guilt for the terrible things I've done. God is inflicting this on me to show me my sins. Which fits in neatly with their theory that I was the cause of their problems. And that all they put me through wasn't abuse, neglect, exploitation, scapegoating, bullying, endangerment and abandonment but logical punishment for my transgressions. See, even your dreams are telling you how wicked you are. 

And, since that's exactly what  happens in my dreams, I assumed they were right. They had me so brainwashed that I "remembered" things that  happened in my dreams as if they were memories. I actually have more dream memories than real ones. And if it's happening night after night, God must be trying to tell me something, right?

Right. But not what it seems. It's time to play detective and start looking at just the facts. Because what I dream I've done wrong, never really happened even though I thought it did. People were always angry with me but not because I'd failed. I hopped through their every hoop. I waited on them. Looking backI see it was either someone else failing or no one. For example, in one repetitive dream, my dad comes downstairs in his underwear, furious because I've been loud and woken him up. But he worked at night. And I had to go to bed early with his kids because I slept with them. I crept around the house on eggshells. I hardly would have dared make noise. When he was awakened, it was by my stepmother watching TV all night. But that, like most everything else just got blamed on me.  

And my dreams are right, there were always random inappropriate and unstated demands on me. Even my father-in-law saw that the first time he met me. As my husband says, these aren't dreams, they're memories. I did live periodically in squalor, in unsafe places. I was left behind and left alone too young, a lot. I was cold, alone, hungry, a lot. I felt lost and homeless because I was. I expected to be at everyone's beck and call. I did have to care for lots of random kids. I did have mountains of heavy work to do. I was told I was bad. 

So why does my mind keep going over these experiences? Two reasons, I think. One, to try to make sense of the senseless cruelty. My inner child is trying understand why she wasn't parented but had to parent her parents. She's trying to juxtapose the notion of loving family with the nightmare she lived. She's trying and failing to find a reason for her ugly alternate reality, a way to survive her parents delusional fantasy. She's trying to bring order to her intensely painful cognitive dissonance. 

And second, I think God is trying to find a safe way of showing me that it did happen and shouldn't have. He protected little me by dulling the memories. Which explains why I have so few good memories. There weren't any. And now He's helping big me see and come to grips with it. To get clean from the gaslighting. This isn't ideal. What would have been best is for it not to have happened. But since it has, needs must He find a workaround. And that is my dreams. 

Where does this leave me? Hoping that the dreams will abate, the more I process this in real life. 

How narcissistic parental rage/ IED and bullying creates CPTSD

Hi friends. I'm on a quest to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parental abuse, enmeshment, scapegoating, neglect, exploitation, parentification, scapegoating and gaslighting. And one piece of the puzzle I've not talked much about is parental rage, both overt and passive aggressive. I'm looking today at how I developed CPTSD from being raised by angry narcissistic and histrionic people. And also how that carries over into adulthood, living with a partner with chronic rage and IED (intermittent explosive disorder). 

I come from a background of chaos. My "family life" was a constantly changing, complicated sticky mess. My histrionic, narcissistic parents were all over the place. We moved constantly, were periodically  homeless, frequently jobless and into one odd situation after another (self-proclaimed missionaries to Alaska, running foster care homes). Both of them had Peter Pan Syndrome (refusal to grow up and act like adults) Then they divorced and married equally immature, selfish people. All of them were angry and resentful. My mother and dad's wife were passive-aggressively angry and my dad and mom's husband were full of rage and exhibited what we now call intermittent explosive disorder. 

My mom and stepmom would pout and sulk if they didn't get their way. Or just because. I was expected to fix, please and cater to them, like a parent. They were both lazy and left a lot of their work to me, including raising their new kids. My mom didn't display it so much but then she didn't often get crossed. She just carried on with her bizarre lifestyle and I fell in line. When she hooked up with her boyfriend, all that changed. He moved in and hit the ground running with the abuse, neglect, etc. 

I laugh when I think of just how much gaslighting went into that shitshow. He'd lost his job for hitting a supervisor, though he said he got laid off. He who prided himself on being able to ferret out a liar, lied his way through everything. He sponged off my mom and my child support, never holding down a job much after that. I had to get a job at 15 to buy my own clothing and Kotex. While she bought him all kinds of toys. She never took my part and let him bully, mock sexually assault me, lie about and scream at me over stuff he lied about me doing. He kicked me out at 16 for coming home an hour late. Because it was "his house" mind you. I never called a house "my home" after he moved in. It was always theirs. Even though I did the lions' share of work to keep said house. They're divorced now but live together. They can't stand each other. She lied and gaslit me about it never happening on the one occasion that I brought it up. She only ever talks about all he's done to her and never what he did to me. And feels sorry for herself. 

My dad's anger was loud and randomly explosive. He'd come unglued usually when he wife was pouting. She'd triangulate us, sullenly whispering to him about some way I'd failed her. That would set him off and he'd lash out at me (for what I never found out). He'd say "you upset your stepmother." He'd then expect me to somehow make her happy. He never asked me outright to do things. He'd broadly hint, saying things like "maybe Mary could help?" and then invite her to think up something that I might do. 

I'd cry with shame, though I never identified why. I'd beg her to tell me what I could do for her. It had to be pretty difficult for her to think up something because I was already doing all the work. But she managed. And I'd run off to do it. And it just got rolled into my growing chore list. What I don't get is how, if I was failing so badly, how could I possibly be competent enough to satisfy her? Anyway, one thing was certain. My dad wasn't going to do anything about it. In his mind, I screwed up his first marriage and he wasn't going to let me screw up the second. They lived and died despising each other. 

Come to it, that's how my mom feels about me too. She has her real family in which I have no place. How dare I exist to mess up her narcissistic fantasy? But yet, if I wasn't around who would be in the hot seat? Who would they find to blame for their stupid choices? I now see that no matter what a buzzkill I was to their delusions, I was also very convenient as a ready scapegoat, enabling them to never take responsibility for themselves or their shiny new families. 

I know I promised to write about how this affects me now, with a partner with chronic rage. But I'm just too tired. This dismantling of the false reality they stuck me in is exhausting. I'll blog more on that later. Thanks for reading. 

Healing CPTSD, narcissistic parental abuse and gaslighting by learning the correct road signs

 Hi friends. Today in Advent the Catholic Church prays the O antiphon (titles for Jesus) Key of David. This metaphor for unlocking and releasing captives is a good one for those of us suffering with CPTSD. Throughout our lives, we've been slaves and scapegoats of narcissistic parents.  So I'm thinking about keys to healing from abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, scapegoating, shaming, invalidation, parentification and gaslighting. Today, let's explore key to free us from toxic parent and family systems that have enslaved us. 

Number one is to learn red from green. For the first 59 years of my life, I was color blind. I was just an extension of my self-absorbed, immature parents and their new spouses and families. I was taught that self-care was selfish and that responding to caution signs was being too sensitive. Not modeled mind you. Anyone with experience of narcissists knows they take very good care of themselves. At others' expense. They are the most over-sensitive, easily offended folks on the  planet. They take up all the oxygen in the room. They are giant needy, demanding black holes who live parasitically off from others. 

They drain your resources and leave you exhausted, depleted and deprived. You're barely able to function on autopilot, let alone mindfully making healthy choices. And coupled with the constant shaming and gaslighting, I was a burned out, vulnerable mess. And add to that the nightly CPTSD nightmares which left me too tired to keep my eyes open, let alone deal with red flags, especially those about their dangerous behavior and the unsafe people and situations they exposed me to.  

I was gaslit to believe that God didn't protect me or want me to protect myself, but rather just serve them no matter what the cost to me. Exploited, manipulated, remoted controlled, pirated and enmeshed were all I knew. I had no real identity of my own. Scapegoat, servant, surrogate spouse, surrogate parent were my middle names. 

Consequently, I got all the traffic signals wrong because everything was bass ackwards in my life. Up was down, wrong was right and good was bad. I yielded when I should have gone, plowed through red lights, barricades and thin ice warnings.  I went the wrong way up one-way streets and merged when I should have exited. I ran headlong into terrifying situations, with incredibly toxic behaviored people because I didn't know better. And have I got the scratches and dents to prove it. 

I thought God expected me battered, bruised and barmy. But come to find out, He doesn't. He wants me well and whole. He's the one sending the red flags and He wants to me to stop for them and wait on Him to find out when it's safe to proceed. This is revolutionary, brand-new thinking for me. I have to learn new response and ways of doing things to keep my little self safe.

But first, I have to learn to know red from green. And I think that to do that, I have to do pretty much the opposite of what I was taught. If my old response is to run it, my new response should probably be to stop. If I was taught to stop doing something (thinking for myself, having needs and feelings) or yield to someone (to not protect myself from them), maybe that's actually a green light I should go on? 

If something is a one-way street (me doing all the work, giving good and taking of crap) maybe that's a street I should avoid. If my kneejerk response is to merge into a freeway of unhealthy demands, expectations and hurtful behaviors, perhaps I should exit instead. If I'm so tired from the constant pressure of entitled demanding people, I might pull off the side of the road and nap. And find ways to sleep better. And if the roads are too dangerous, and the other drivers too crazy, I could go home, put on comfy jammies and have some cocoa instead. 

How narcissist parents distort and convolute the scapegoat child's reality

 Hello my friends. I'm working to heal from a lifetime of narcissistic parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, enmeshment, parentification, invalidation, triangulation and gaslighting. Today I'm going to explore how narcissistic parents distort their scapegoat child's reality. One essential tool they use is double entendre. They purposely misuse words to deceive and confuse the child. They speak with forked tongues. They use words contrarily and weaponize benign words against the child. Unbeknownst to the child, they are actually saying the opposite of what the child believes them to mean. 

Case in point in my life is the concept of family. Or actually, let's take it back a step, to include the concept of parents and children and the nature of their relationship. My "parents" called themselves this when referring to things expected OF me. I had to do things because "I'm your parent." " You have to obey me." etc. Which would be sort of normal except that they didn't act like parents. 

I was also expected  to parent them. They made very immature, unsafe choices and left me alone in countless dangerous situations. I was a more reliable babysitter at 10 than they ever were as parents. They confided deeply personal, uncomfortable things in me, as a kid. (which I've learned is emotional incest). They expected adult behavior from me that they didn't model. And in situations most actual adults would struggle with. They scolded and shamed me for acting like a kid. So I stopped. I just played the "guess what they want now" game. The stress of these constantly shifting roles has damaged me in irreparable ways. 

Then add to that, their divorce and remarriage, which are other words they misused against me. They both lied about why they got divorced. My mother claimed abuse which didn't happen. She was actually cheating on my dad. They told me it was God's will and made me feel like it was my fault. Then they told me I was lucky because they had a "good" divorce. Then they married other very dysfunctional people and threw me at them to be used and abused. 

So back to the word "parent." They called these people parents as in, I had to serve, respect and obey them. Not as in they had to respect, care for or parent me. I "owed" them life, loyalty and they owed me nothing. Now all four of them were exploiting me each with his or her own unique spin. I was pushed back and forth among four adults who acted like irresponsible teenagers. 

And then they had kids. Now I had siblings, they said. But that was just to get me to serve (parent, wait on, nanny) their new kids. It was made clear that I was only in the "family" on sufferance. I had to earn my keep. It was never my house, I just had to take care of it. I was an unpaid housekeeper, nanny, cook and caregiver before age 14. I was not cared for. I was hungry, cold, homeless and excluded. What was expected of me was optional for them. 

Another irony was that while I was expected to act, think and work like an adult, I was also treated like a foolish, immature child. I was both infantilized and parentified. I was expected to abide by very rigid, inappropriate rules and shamed and shunned if I stepped out of line. At 16, I was working to support my mother's husband and family while going to school. But still given a ridiculously early curfew. Not because my stepfather needed me home for anything. He slept all day. Or because he cared about me. He just liked throwing his weight around. When I came home late, he kicked me out of "his" house. I was left to fend for myself. 

When I was 20 and in college, holding down a job and student teaching, I was made to co-sleep with my dad's and his wife's baby. I had to be home every night at 9:30 to babysit. Even with back injuries, I had to do all their housework including ironing, lugging a heavy vacuum, mopping floor on hands and knees and scaling snow hills to get frozen diapers off the line. Despite doing everyone's work, I was still treated like a naughty child, scolded, shamed, ignored and made fun of. 

You might wonder how they got away with it. The secret, I've learned is to keep it small and not let anyone see just how badly you're treating someone. And lie a lot. We never had company over. No one saw that I was sleeping on a cot in the baby's room. They presented an image of me as the problem. Occasionally they were caught out. But I still didn't see how wrong this was because they had me so gaslit. 

This odd parallel universe, of being adult child and child adult went on all my life. I continued to rise or lower to their expectations, as needed. Lots is trapped in my head. I didn't see it for what it was. But some incidents are beginning to show me the way out. My husband and a few trusted friends are  helping me understand that they presented a false image of reality to me. And this brings us back to misuse of words. 

My mother has always called her new family (husband and children with him) "my family." She would come over and then say she had to get home to her family. It was said very intentionally, to show us that we were NOT her family. She would say it in such a way as to sound like we were selfishly keeping her from them. She behaved as if the slightest amount of babysitting was a monstrous expectation on our part, though I cared for her children, free of charge, all my life. 

And the funny thing is that she usually came over to get something, not give it. I've been my mother's sounding board, sex therapist, and dumping ground all my life. And they don't like it when you have a spouse or kids of your own either. They get jealous because you're supposed to parent them, not anyone else. That's the flip-flop nature of narcissist parents. We want what we want from you when we want it. 

Every time she came over, she'd bend my ear with complaints. One time, my youngest daughter wanted me to play and my mother snapped and said "quit bothering your mother. Sometimes I need her to be my mother too (?!?)" What went around never came around. I'd give loving family support and care (often inappropriately too much) but did not receive it. I was family when it suited them. I was outsider when I needed anything. 

And one thing to know when dealing with narcissist parents is that it will ever be thus. They don't give much and never without expecting much more in return. Their greed knows no bounds. You can never be, do or give enough to fill their gaping black holes. For that reason, I've been forced to cut contact, to stop my very natural and generous giving. Because it only comes back to bite me. No good deed goes unpunished with narcissist parents.  

I'm sorry to sound so defeatist but there it is. I didn't ask for it to be this way. I wish there was another way. I'd have liked to have a more normal, healthy family of origin. But they didn't. They liked me enslaved. What I had to finally do is to realize that this wasn't good for me. Or my family. I couldn't be a healthy person or parent being so enmeshed with them. So I'm cutting the netting.

I'm trying to find the  me in all this "family." I'm writing the script instead of just letting them feed my lines. I'm determining how I want to interact with them instead of hopping through their weird, constantly changing hoops. I don't want to be their perpetual parent OR child. I'm an adult. I want to be me. If that's good enough for someone, fine. If not, also fine. Take it or leave it. Actually, at this point, I prefer they just leave it. I don't want their version of family anymore. 

How I feel as an empath with CPTSD (this might surprise you)

 Hi friends. I'm digging deeper into CPTSD (complex or childhood post-traumatic stress disorder) that I developed from a lifetime of abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, invalidation, bullying, parentification, scapegoating, terrorizing and gaslighting by four narcissistic parents. On top of that, I'm an empath which makes it so much worse. Today I'm going to try to explain how empath plus CPTSD makes me feel. Some of these things might surprise you. There are the usual suspects, fear, anxiety and sadness. But deeper and more core are feelings which are so big they defy naming, though I'll try. 

I am an empath, meaning that I don't just feel for others. That's sympathy or pity. I feel WITH them. And unfortunately it's the unpleasant emotions and none of the positive. When they succeed, I admire and applaud by I don't get any satisfaction vicariously. Yet when they struggle, I glom onto that with my whole self. I'm shredded by others' sorrow and have zero detachment skills. But I'm also sensitized to the fact that it's not mine. I don't want to seem to make it about me. Because it's not. But yet it is. I feel their pain more than my own. I feel it as if it is mine. 

Deep empathy has this weird ability to lift you outside yourself. You have a prescience that defies explanation. You can see people's minds with crystal clarity. Their hearts are laid bare. You can see things about them that they can't see themselves. You can almost finish their sentences and predict their next moves. And it is a terrifying superpower to have. 

You can never really be angry or upset with people because you're so tuned in to why they do things. You feel pity and sorrow for them. But the irony is that you often cannot feel those things for yourself. It's like you're drained dry by feeling with others and have none left for yourself. You are enmeshed with everyone and don't know where, or even if, they end and you begin. You are hard-wired to give and can't stop. The vulnerability and protentional for abuse is unimaginable. 

Now, enter the narcissist. They have this unerring ability to sniff out an empath and target them for their own use. If they are your parents, you're screwed. If they're Christian narcissist parents, God help you. Narcs already take too much. When they encounter a chronic over-giver they just roll them into their oversized selves. They exploit your empathy for selfish ends. They thieve your identity. They capitalize on the fact that you pour yourself into others. They manipulate your understanding of God so that you believe that it's Him you serve when it's actually them. 

I was raised to serve. I don't remember ever doing anything that wasn't designed to please someone else. I was brainwashed to feel guilty for needing and, God forbid, wanting. I was indoctrinated as a toddler into the cult of mommy and daddy. And then when they got sick of our family, they made shiny new ones that I wasn't apart of but was made to serve also. And I did. And felt guilty for not being able to do enough. As my husband so aptly puts it, I was groomed to this. 

I'm only now starting to really unpack all this. For the first 59 years of life, I defended, complied, supplied, excused and affirmed them in all things. I scolded my husband for having the guts to say what they did was wrong. And ironically, I'm still feeling a lot of shame, too much gratitude and not enough anger. Yes I said not enough. Some anger is a healthy response to hurt. None is sick and dysfunctional. It perpetuates the shame. 

I was grateful for common things all kids should expect. Which actually I didn't get, as I look back. Things like a bedroom or bed, clothing, food, warmth, a coat, transportation at some points, even a home. I was evicted and homeless at 16. Everything was transactional, except that I didn't get my end of the bargain. I did my part (and others' parts) because "that's what family does." Yet I wasn't family when it came to basic care. I had to earn the things I needed. Things were taken from me and given to their children and new spouses. My mother used my child support to fund her new family. While going to school, I had to work for clothing so her husband could sleep the day away. I was family when it came to getting from me and an outsider when it came to them giving to me. What was expected of me was optional for them. 

So what do I feel? Pity. For their pathetic machinations. For their unquenchable greed. For their embarrassing and awkward behavior. For their shallow, self-absorbed lives. 

Trying to answer the question about my narcissistic parents that I've been avoiding all my life

 Hi friends. Thanks for going back with me to sort out the mess my life has been. I'm rethinking what happened and finally seeing it not as healthy family behavior but abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, invalidation, shaming, enmeshment, parentification, scapegoating and gaslighting by four narcissistic parents. Today, I'm going to try to answer the question that has plagued me all my life. What's that question? Well, you might be surprised. 

Is the question why did they do all these things? No, but it should be. I should be demanding what the hell they were playing at screwing me over like they did. But then, I wouldn't have had to because they wouldn't have done these things in the first place. The fact that I can't shows how abusive they were. Because if you know histrionic/narcissists that's one of the many questions you can never ask. They get really mad if you call them out. Or even if they (which is more likely) just think you are. 

It's not safe, especially if you're their child. You basically have to put up and shut up. And even if I did ask, I wouldn't get a straight answer. The two times I did, it didn't end well. I was lied to, lied about, screamed at, further gaslit, shamed, bullied, mocked and assaulted by their  partners whom they sicced on me. Both experiences were absolutely terrifying and left me shattered. And as per usual, I just picked up the pieces of myself and carried on. Never an apology from them or admission of anything. 

So I have been avoiding that question too, but for self-preservation. All my life, I've excused, exonerated and defended them and punished myself. Because as the scapegoat I was always at fault and responsible. But now that I getting healthier, I just don't give a damn, anymore.  There was never any excuse for it, end of. 

The question I am trying to answer today, is why was I so afraid of them? What was I so afraid of? Because terrified, I sure as hell was. So much so that 60 years later, I am still terrified of them. And two are deceased. In fact, I'm probably more terrified now than ever. Their specters have loomed so large that they've become enormous, unstoppable juggernauts. They've grown in power and magnitude. I can't think about them without being sick with fear. But a fear I've covered all my life. 

And that is both the cause of and answer to this question. This fear is primitive because I was so young when they began frightening me. And so bizarre guerilla-like in the manner of doing so.  Both of my biological parents and stepmom presented as calm, balanced people. My stepfather was just bat shit crazy angry. But my dad would fly into these insane and random rages. And my mother and stepmother would turn septic out of the blue. Both were venomous and seething angry, I now see. Back then, I didn't. 

Because they painted themselves as righteous, put-together people, these outbursts seemed out of character. (At least my stepdad was honest about being a raging maniac.) So I assumed and they told me, that I provoked them to wrath. That I caused it. Even though they never gave me the tiniest clue as to what I had actually done wrong. Or if they did, it was blown out of proportion, twisted, exploited, manipulated, etc. 

Sometimes my dad (I realize now) was mad at his wife or one of his kids and just took it all out on me. Another time, when I was 16, I came home 15 minutes late and my mom's (unemployed, lazy sponger, living off my child support) husband grounded me for a month. Another time, I sat in the drive talking with a friend an hour past when I was supposed to be in he went so ballistic I thought he was going to combust. He kicked me out of the house. She stood by and let him. 

They used a lot of narc word salad (bullshit) about how I was disobedient, sassy, a nasty person, too sensitive, too critical, selfish, unChristian, a show off etc. But I have no memory of actually doing the things they said I'd done. Or if I did, I remember it being an innocent mistake that was twisted into something horrendous. Very frequently, I'd actually done a good thing, trying to please or placate their ceaseless expectations. But it wasn't done right. (?!) Or I hadn't tried hard enough (?!?) Or their demands had changed and I wasn't kept up to speed (??!!) Or  even I had the wrong motives for doing it (?!?!?!) There was never any winning, or pleasing them. I couldn't hope to be good enough. 

And being so bloody terrified I wouldn't have dared to do bad things to start with. When I made mistakes it was because I was so nervous and frightened of their displeasure. And then my dad (the King of oversensitive) would say I was overreacting and needed to lighten up. As if! And, come to find out, everything I'd done or even supposedly done was actually stuff all kids, including my four parents had done. 

My mom snuck out of the house, mouthed off to her mom and destroyed a dress she'd made. My dad wrecked family cars, told his parents off routinely. My stepmother never did a thing around her house. My stepfather beat a kid half to death for shits and giggles. They told those stories with pride. They continued their childish behavior into adulthood. And poor me, who jumped at her own shadow, was made to be more adult at 6 than they'd ever been in their lives. 

So what WAS I afraid of? What was I afraid they would do? They were four rather dysfunctional adult children. They are all emotionally frail bullies. What power did they have over me? Adult me doesn't have an answer. Child me is too afraid to pry her hands off her eyes to ask. I think if I can manage to do that, I'll see that what I'm afraid of is a chimera based on myths, lies and gaslighting. 

And saddest and scammiest of all, they said that it was God who was angry, displeased and whom I was letting down. They made God into a Golem to terrify me into submission. So one level of my fear was upsetting God. I wasn't even afraid of what they could do to me. I'd taken their worst all my life and survived. I'll say this, I was hard to keep down. I just kept coming back for more and they got better at the abusive tactics. 

So fear of displeasing God. But another level was, I think, fear that ultimately, I'd never make anyone happy, no matter what I did or how hard I tried. I didn't just fail, I WAS failure personified. And that I couldn't and shouldn't live, with that knowledge. That somehow I was the exception to God's unconditional love. That everyone would be better off without foolish, failure me in the world. Which doesn't make sense, I know. But when you've been bashed in the head since childhood, you tend not to think clearly. 

I think maybe, as a therapist once put it so well, I was trying to keep myself alive. And running out of reasons to do so. That explains to some extent, the terribly traumatic dreams and nightmares. My dream make up convincing lies about things I've supposedly done that are unspeakable. Planted by my parents to perpetuate this idea that I'm their only problem. Get rid me and viola, all's well. 

Does it help to answer this question? I wish it did. I wish, that seeing my demons unmasked, I could laugh off my fears and move into the light. But old sins cast long shadows. And I have lived in them for so long, I'm not sure that I can or ever will, be able to shake them. And that makes me afraid too. Afraid that by admitting I'm damaged will be letting someone down, again. 

CPTSD and gaslighting fog follow me everywhere

 Hello my friends. Today in my quest to heal from CPTSD (childhood or complex post traumatic stress disorder) I'm looking at how gaslighting after effects follow me everywhere. If you're new to the blog, welcome and buckle up because we get very intense around here. I'm trying to deprogram and reparent from a lifetime of narcissistic histrionic parental abuse, enmeshment, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, invalidation, triangulation, parentification, scapegoating, shaming and gaslighting about all that. 

So first,  I want to explore the idea of parental gaslighting. I think of this as indoctrination and brainwashing into the fantasy cult of the enmeshed, narcissistic parent. All reality is denied except the delusional unreality of the narcissists. Every experience I had, or was shoved into, was twisted to suit my narc histrionic parents' narrative. Good was bad, wrong was right, immoral was Godly, I was selfish and too sensitive, you get my drift. 

I get why the term gaslighting is used. But as a survivor, I'll say that it is more like gassing. Those of us with CPTSD have been mentally and emotionally gassed, like soldiers in WW1, with toxic behavior and poisonous thinking of the histrionic narcissists. You can see it in our eyes, the squinting and shielding from being constantly on the defensive. Our brains are burnt from years of parental nonsensical hot air and self-centered manipulation.  They're damaged from constant dousing with cortisol and adrenaline, in response to their manufactured crises and stress. 

And like any other burn scars, they don't go away. There's no brain grafting process that can remove damaged memories and thought processes and replace them with good, healthy ones. This is our normal and it follows us everywhere, into every new situation, relationship and experience, like our legs or liver. It's kneejerk response. I expect abuse and shaming. It's kindness I don't understand. And this has caused untold problems in my family of now relationships. 

For one thing, no one knows that my brain processes are radically different from most everyone else's. I look fairly normal on the outside, and so normal behavior is expected of me. But my insides are abnormal AF. Everything about me, how I think, feel and act is cockeyed, skewed and distorted. And the one thing that helps me fit in is also the thing that makes it more difficult for others to understand my predicament. 

I am an actor. I know how to read faces, mirror responses and mimic behavior. I'm pretty good at sensing appropriate and healthy behavior even though it's a 180 from what I learned and how I was treated. So if I appear to be always "on stage" it's because I am. I'm desperately struggling to learn the lines and play my part. 

Is it fake? Eh, yes and no. It's not genuine because these are learned behaviors. Healthy interaction and life skills weren't modeled for me. You can't be abused, neglected, endangered, abandoned, invalidated, manipulated and parentified on a daily basis and learn healthy behavior. Cerebrally, I know what's right, but core response is still sick. So I fake it till I make it. 

How loving parents vs. narcissistic parents treat their kids: holidays, gifts and good deeds

 Hi friends. Tomorrow is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, mother of the Americas and of us all. I can't think of a better day to contrast the difference between how loving parents and narcissistic parents treat their kids. Now you might say, well aren't all parents somewhat selfish and you'd be right. The difference is M.O. (modus operandi), frequency of selfish behaviors, intent and targeting of certain children and not others. This is only part one of the story. 

Narcissistic abuse of scapegoat children is pattern. It's how they do things most of the time. Loving altruistic behavior is abnormal for them. Loving parents have the reverse ratio. I share this from six decades of narcissistic parental abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, bullying, backstabbing, shaming, scapegoating, invalidation and gaslighting about it all, by four narcissistic parents. 

1) Good deeds. The child does something loving and no matter how imperfect, the loving parent is proud of, grateful to the child. She's made to feel good about it. But conversely, no matter how well it's done, the narcissistic parent will find a way to diminish it. She'll find fault, insult, mock, twist motives, feel sorry for herself (?!), shame, act annoyed, downplay etc. She will give her golden child credit for what the scapegoat actually did. 

Case: My dad and I surprised my mom a necklace for her birthday when I was four. We wrapped it in pretty paper, put it on the bed and led her blindfolded into the room. Her response: where's the rest of my gifts? I began crying thinking I'd failed her (that began a lifelong pattern) and she got mad because we didn't laugh at her "joke." 

Case: I usually made dinner for the family when my stepmom was at work. She didn't cook and we rarely ate dinner unless I or my dad made something. I went a little bigger this one time and her sons told her how much fun we'd had. She got mad and said I'd deprived her boys by not having their supper ready till 6 pm. I felt so guilty for that. Despite even my dad, for once defending me, snapping "why can't you ever say anything nice to Mary?" Why not, Jack? Maybe you should ask yourself that. Then he spoiled it by telling me not to be so sensitive. 

I probably don't have to tell you how a loving parent handles these things. But I will. And far be it from me to give myself much credit for anything but I am a loving parent. I treasure any gift my kids give me no matter (maybe because of) how homemade it is. And they know it. I make a big deal out of the good, kind things they do. I'm not jealous, I'm proud of them. 

2) Gift-giving, special occasions. Narcissistic parents make a huge, out-of-proportion deal out of their own  and their golden children's birthdays. They expect the scapegoat's attendance, armed with gifts, no matter how busy she is with her own life and family (their grandchildren). They want it all, big gifts and small, many and expensive. You can't give enough. Contrarily, they go cheap or not at all with gifts to the scapegoat. They make no bones about it, and actually want you to know that you are excluded. They say they "can't remember" your birthday but you damn well better remember theirs. They bullshit you with nonsense like "I don't do big gifts for Christmas" yet expect you to lavish on them and theirs. They cry poverty, yet expect the scapegoat to cough up, no matter how skint she is. 

Case: I was given gifts that were actually for my siblings. A race car set at 14 which doubled as free babysitting. I was expected, in college, which I was paying for entirely myself, no help from any of my four parents, to give and give big to them. I was living on about $20 a week and basically didn't eat. Homemade was sneered at. When my children came along, my grown ass brothers still expected presents despite them never giving me or mine a thing or even remembering our birthdays. 

One year, things were really tight for us. We'd just moved into a house that needed a lot of work. I had just lost a baby and my husband had started a new job making less but closer. suggested to my mom that we not buy gifts for each other. We were shopping for Christmas dinner which I was paying for like I always did.  She readily agreed with her not giving. Then proceeded to fill up my cart with goodies for "her family" which she promised to pay me back for. She never did. Then she wanted me to buy her a sexy nightie. 

Loving parents give to all their kids, the things they know their children want and need. they do their best. They DON'T EXCLUDE. They give, not expect. Holidays and birthdays are about others, not themselves. We've had hard candy Christmases with most items bought second-hand. My one son said those were his favorite memories. 

The naked truth about how messed up I am

 Hi friends. This post is going maybe as deep as I've ever gone. I'm going to share how messed up I am after living in six decades of abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation,  manipulation, triangulation, scapegoating, invalidation, enmeshment, parentification and gaslighting about it all from four narcissistic parents. 

It's not just my brain that's damaged by CPTSD. My abilities are crippled. I'm disabled by it. Every thought and feeling is colored by it. I don't understand my needs and wants. I only know what others want and need and how it's my responsibility to provide. And how inept I am at being able to do that. And how that engulfs me with shame. I don't know where they end and I begin or if I even do begin. My identity was stolen by enmeshed parents who saw me as an extension of themselves. 

I second (third, 26th) guess everything I think and do. I never make a decision for myself, without endless self-doubt. I never do anything without self recriminations. I never do anything good for me, without feeling immense guilt at the audacity of my own "selfishness." I'm terrified by countless faceless, formless fears. I walk amid shadows. I live in a parallel universe in which I don't fit. I'm as out of place as a turnip in daily life and have about as many coping skills. 

To most people it may not show. It does if you look close. I'm bent with trying to fit in, to accommodate and to survive in unsafe, healthy situations. My face wears a perpetual grimace which is part clenched teeth and part appeasing smile. I do not relax ever and wouldn't know what that felt like if I did. I sit on the edge of the seat expecting to have to jump up and do something for someone. 

What was modeled for me by parents was bizarre, maladaptive, manipulative, histrionic behavior. Odd was normal and normal pretty much didn't exist. They went around in a delusional, center of the universe fantasy in which I was a supporting character. They were constantly needy and attention-seeking. They never sang in the choir. They were prima donna and primo uomo. They didn't work within systems. They did their own thing. 

I saw other families who were more functional, less theatrical, more genuine. And I remember secretly wishing sometimes that I was their kid. You know, how your kids will sometimes say, quite normally, I wish Mrs. S was my mom? And you just smile and say sometimes I wish she was too (lol). But being an empath, I didn't want to hurt my own parents. Because they wouldn't have laughed it off as greasy kid stuff. They would have exploded, on me. It wouldn't have been safe to. Even just the normal silly stuff kids do was verboten to me. So I developed some coping skills which if odd and unhealthy, at least helped me juxtapose this cognitive dissonance that was my life. 

But these defense mechanisms don't fit real well in society. Throughout my life, I've done and said weird things, which earned me strange looks, censure and estrangement. I'd fawn to the point of emotionally prostituting myself. Sometimes even physically. I was told I was dirty flirty which as you can imagine, raised my shame to self-harming levels. In youth group, I was punished for letting an older guy kiss me. Why there were creepy 20 year-olds hitting on a 13-year-old at church was never addressed. 

I didn't realize how odd I was until it was until it was too late. I'd act like I'd been taught to act and people would give me funny looks and back away. I showed a lot of signs of CPTSD which I see now put a target on my back for the creeps. I'd been groomed to serve others needs and they could smell this a mile away. I couldn't even do over-nighter events without my nightmares, sleep talking and crying out terrifying others. Some mocked me for it. No one ever reached out to help. And I just felt even ore like the idiot oddball. 

I cringe when I recall how disturbing my behavior. But I also feel really sorry for young me. And angry. Why the fuck did no one step in and help? If I was that messed up, why did no one think to look into why? Why did they just punish and ostracize? Like that was going to do any good. Not one of them could punish more than I already did to myself. Hello, suicidal kid here! And ostracize? oh honey, been there, lived that all my life. 

And why did they throw me at these icky pedophiles, turn a blind eye while they molested me and then shame me for feeling good that someone liked me? But no, they just smiled their happy, normal "Christian" smiles and tsk-tsked scapegoat me. Which I see now is just more narcissistic fantasy. Pin all our sins on the scapegoat and send her out of the village in shame so we can pretend we're actually functional good Christians. 

And I see where it might sound paranoid when I say it was just me they did this to. But it really was. Because the other kids had (wait for it) PARENTS WHO GAVE A SHIT! They taught their kids how to navigate and take care of themselves. It wasn't that they were so much holier than me as I always thought. It was because they had enough pride in themselves not to let this happen. And the creeps would never dare to take them on because they  had back up and support, not four totally self--absorbed parents who left their daughter to the wolves. 

Interestingly, history would prove that most of the many churches I've attended, were not as Godly as they'd have liked to believe. Especially the one with all the pedos. In all the groups I've been in, secular or religious, they had the highest rate of failed relationships,  multiple marriages and broken kids. Which gives me no pleasure to say. Maybe if the adults had worried less about their Christian image and more about actually behaving like Christians, we could have gotten the help we needed. 

So now I muddle through. 

How narcissistic parents flip the script to gaslight the scapegoat child

 Hello my friends. Today in my deep dive into narcissistic abuse, I'm looking at ways narcissistic parents and stepparents flip the script to gaslight the scapegoat child. These come from my six decades' experiences of abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, exploitation, parentification, triangulation, toxic shaming, manipulation, invalidation, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all by four histrionic narcissistic parents. They literally rewrote the narrative. 

"My house, my rules." As if they have the right (I  hate that word) to do anything they want to someone because it's "their house." This is a pecker-headed thing to say to begin with. Because usually it's said by narcissists who stampede others' boundaries when in their homes. And it's isn't' just your house. It's the family's home including the scapegoat child's home. In my case, it was NOT the house of the one saying it, my mother's husband. He was just the live-in sponger whom my mother ceded control over me, to. 

"My daughter lives with us." Do you hear how weird this sounds? No? I didn't either for most of my life. But let's take apart this gaslighting phrase. First, why would your daughter not live with you? Why would you say it like giving her a home is some kind of privilege and not just basic child care. And the use of pronouns is odd. "My daughter" (possessive) and "us" as if the daughter not part of the family, just a lodger. Which is was, an unpaid domestic servant. When my parents divorced and remarried, I never again called it my home. Because it wasn't presented to me as mine. I wasn't part of the family. It was their homes that I was being allowed, by their good graces, to live in. I always said I lived with my dad or mom. This phenomenon has a name. It's called hidden homelessness. 

"You owe us for all we've done for you." So much wrong with this. Again with the we and you. The scapegoat isn't family. She's a possession. A slave. A helper and fixer. But also expected to repay? Repay what? You never provided even basic care which YOU owe ME as your child. And wait, I thought we were family? At least that's what you say when enumerating your many expectations of me. "Family help each other." But when you do something for me, suddenly it's a business transaction. My mother lied and said she would pay a few months rent when I was in college. Then she gaslit me and said it was a load she expected to be paid back with interest. After using my savings bonds and child support to fund her new family. Supposedly this was to pay for my care when actually it was to buy shit for her chronically unemployed boyfriend.  

"Family loyalty." Whoa, does that phrase cover a multitude of sins! What it translated to in my situation was "never repeat what happens here." Never say what we've done to hurt you and how we neglect you. And I never did. Till now. It still feels disloyal. But if it's disloyal to tell the bad things someone did to you, then loyalty is misplaced. 

"God expects this of you." My, oh my how this was used against me. And funny how this God of which they spoke always applauded every cruel and hurtful thing they did to me. Every unsafe situation they put me in, every inappropriate expectation, every act of abuse and neglect, every lie told about me, every dangerous person they put me in the path of, was all explained as God's will. So it's no wonder that I have a broken understanding of God. 

These are just some of the countless mind-effing things they've made me believe over the years. 

How a histrionic narcissistic parent's threats of suicide destroy a child

Hello my loved ones.  If you're following my blog in its current iteration, heartfelt thanks and gratitude. It's been a log road of ride lately. I'm excavating six decades of narcissistic parent abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, triangulation, scapegoating, invalidation, enmeshment, parentification, infantilization and gaslighting about it all, from four "parents." And the impact it's had on me. Today I'm looking at what might be the most insidious and shattering form of narcissistic abuse and that is a parent's weaponized threats of suicide. That one thing almost destroyed me. Thank God for God and his beloved Son and Spirit. 

It is currently not the done thing to use the word "suicide." I hesitate even using it now because censors will flag and ban my blog. I get why, but try telling my dad not to use the word. He was threatening me with his self-harm since I was 5. I was probably the only kindergartener who knew what it meant. Where was anyone then, to worry about what impact this had on me? I just carried that shit in my broken little heart and told no one.  

And what did it matter what term was used? As if not using a certain word will change what actually happens? I wish that just changing the jargon could stop its impact. But the intent was the same. All I knew was that my daddy intended to top himself at any given moment and there wasn't a bloody thing his little girl could do about it. 

So as well-intentioned as this censorship might be, it's not helpful for those of us affected by it long before there was an internet. Or anyone to know or care how we worried ourselves sick. I need to talk about this or I will run mad. I need say the words that were said to me and which have been trapped in my child mind for 55 years. And anyone who has endured the death (or just threatened death) of a loved one from self-harm, needs to as well. 

Because it isn't just the person doing it or talking about it who suffers. Not by a long chalk. Especially not when it is a narcissistic, histrionic parent.  I'd say that I suffered more than him. For all his talk about it, my dad liked himself quite a lot. He fancied himself a minister (no training) and was quick to point out specks in others' eyes. Yet he never addressed the board in his, which were his continued threats of self-harm when he didn't get his way. 

So you may say, oh poor guy, he was really in pain. But as I look back, I'm not so sure. He was pretty glib about it. And the way he forced me to listen to his plans. He seemed to enjoy the power he had to make me miserable. I know we're not supposed to say this, but I believe, from firsthand experience that threats of self-harm are sometimes bullying. They sure as hell are traumatizing, mind-messing and behavior altering. 

So we censor the word because we want to prevent further incidents of self-harm. God yes. I can't begin to describe how his threats devastated me. And warped my brain and shattered my heart. No one should suffer like that. Because say what you will about the person taking their own life being a victim, those left behind are even more so. Whether they actually do it or just terrorize people into thinking they will, they kill large parts of those who love them.  And they do it very casually, leaving us to bleed out. And do all the dirty work: the guilt, shame, fixing.  

So on that note, I'm going to be the one to say what a lot of us victims feel, that suicide is incredibly selfish. And I say that completely empathizing with the massive emotional pain that drives them to it. I will give special dispensation to kids and teens. I don't think they have any idea of the hurt it will cause others. I'm not even sure if they understand that it is permanent. I think many believe that they will somehow be saved. Kids think they are invincible. 

But my dad? He knew. He saw how much I cared and he didn't care. I know, you'll say "he was the one hurting." "He was sending out cries for help" and "you should take it seriously." I know all the received wisdom about how family is supposed to understand, not dismiss it, etc. And I did. Every. Single. Time. He would "cry for help" and I'd jump to help and fix and bend and twist to keep dad happy. And it was never enough. He just got better at the mind games. But I didn't know that's what they were.  I gave up my life and self so he'd keep his. 

And he never did do what he promised. So that's good right? Sure. That's what I thought. At least dad is safe. Well, maybe so, but one of us did lose her life, her identity, her self-worth. I felt constant shame and guilt. No matter how hard I tried, he held that sword of Damocles over my head. He said dance, and I said name the tune. It became a lifelong dance marathon and it never did me one fucking bit of good. 

I have very few good memories of childhood. But I recall the first time he told me that he was going to end it all, as if it was happening now. He didn't even commit to anything, just said vaguely and calmly, as if he was contemplating buying a new car, that he'd probably at some point eradicate himself. I cried, said I loved him and would miss him. And wouldn't he miss me? Uhh, no, he pondered, he didn't think so. So there wasn't anything I could do about it except suffer with the knowledge, live in fear and bend over backwards to keep him happy. I died a bit that day. I don't remember laughing much after that. 

I think now that he never intended to do anything. I think he just got narcissistic supply seeing me cry, beg and grovel. I think now that it was just a ploy to keep me dancing attendance on him, his new wife and their kids. You might say, oh you must never say that to a potential suicide. I didn't. I wish now that I'd have told him that if there was nothing I could do, then quit threatening me with it. But even thinking of doing that makes me feel guilty. 

And why must I not say that? I have a right to life too. A right to peace of mind and satisfaction of doing a good job. Why was it necessary that my life be destroyed over it? So what if I had told him to quit bullying me and just do what he needed to do. Would it have been my fault if he had? My gaslit brain says yes but my common sense says no. I can't control his actions and enabling him to keep jerking me around this way doesn't help either one of us. Only I can end this Spandau Ballet he put me through. 

And the ironic thing is that the one who actually followed through, was me. Or I would have if it wasn't for fear of what it would do to my beloved husband and kids. Where he didn't care  how he hurt me, that was what stopped me. And I know, you may think, well if you knew how bad suicide was how could you contemplate it? That's the kicker. Being guilted by suicide threats made me suicidal with shame. 

And further paradox. Would I have done it to end the pain? Nope. I figured I deserved all of it and more for failing my dad. I would have done it to spare my loved ones having to suffer with such a piece of shit person as me. Which of course made me feel even more guilty. It's a cruel, vicious, self-perpetuating cycle. And trust me, you could never blame me as much as I blame myself. 

But what I've learned is that self-blame is a thing we use to try to make sense of it. If it's our fault, we can do something about it. We can prevent it. Like I did all those years placating my dad. But God doesn't see it that way. You know how He says that the sins of the fathers are passed to their kids? It doesn't mean we're destined to repeat our fathers' sins. We're not automatons. The last thing I wanted was to put my kids through what I'd lived with. 

The scripture means that their poison splashes onto us. We feel the repercussions more than they do. I got caught in the crosshairs of his selfishness. I got the fallout. Now I have to convince myself that I didn't fail him. He failed me. And that's going to be a tough job because the gaslighting is powerful and the voices are real. And I got a slow start. So I might not make it to the mountain. But I want to help you get there. 

I want to let you know, what I didn't know because I was too young. It is not your fault. It's not your job to fix. No one has the right to terrorize you with their problems. Even your kids. It  hurts like hell to know that they are suffering. I'm not saying be callous, God no. But you can't take their suffering on yourself. There's one and only one that did. Our Lord Jesus. I'm of the belief that it wasn't so much our sins but our pain that he took to the cross. You can give all you have, and it may help them. Or it may not. But it doesn't mean that you didn't give good. You are good. And it is enough. You deserve joy. 

Love, mar

. 

Oddly helpful things I'm doing to heal CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse

 Hi friends. Happy belated Thanksgiving. This year, I'm grateful for being able to finally recognize narcissistic parental abuse. And now that I see, I can begin to address and hopefully heal my CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder). Here are some oddly helpful tools to do that. Odd because we might not think of them as typically helpful (some might even seem counterintuitive) but then, my life with narcissistic parents was anything but typical. 

1) Pay attention to the voice in my head. There's a lot of shame, fear, insecurity, hypervigilance, grief, bewilderment, anxiety and stress in my mind from decades of having to dance attendance on four selfish, self-centered, demanding parent dictators. I rarely to never feel confident about anything thanks to the nagging self-doubt. So now, when I feel shame niggling, I listen closely to what it's saying. 

2) Dissect shame. For the longest time, I felt constant, pervasive shame without really even being conscious of it. Shame was as much a part of me as my leg. I was indoctrinated in shame by parental abuse,  neglect, invalidation, exploitation, endangerment, abandonment and gaslighting. So now that I know this, I'm taking apart this endless self-disgust to get to the root of it. And what I'm finding is that most of the time, it's not about what I've done but what was done to me by narcissistic parents. Or it's from coping skills I've had to adopt to placate them. Or their neglect of my basic care and lack of self-care skills. Often it's from my parents' purposeful self-serving sabotaging of my sense of self.  

3) Quit the coping mechanisms. I've learned a lot of unhealthy defensive moves from years of oppressive parents. Funny thing though, they didn't actually defend me. They just humored, enabled and even armed the oppressors. My empathy was used against me. My people pleasing was weaponized to the point that I was everyone's servant. My love, devotion and support was exploited. And my self was absorbed into their ginormous, greedy egos. So now, I'm needing to learn to please others less and me more. To love, support and be devoted to me. To empathize with myself. To meet my needs. And if this goes contrary to what others expect of me, so be it. It should. Anyone who would expect me to care for them at my own expense doesn't care for me. 

4) Disable instead of enable. So clearly, parental abuse, neglect, exploitation, scapegoating, parentification, abandonment, endangerment, invalidation, shaming and gaslighting didn't happen by accident. Or all at once. It started early and gained momentum. And that happened because people enabled my parents. I enabled them. Growing up in this, I learned to excuse cruelty, defend their right to hurt me, ignore pain, expect nothing of them and fulfill their incredibly inappropriate expectations. I learned that it was wrong to care for myself, that I was the one with the problem because I was "too sensitive." So now, I'm disabling their power over me. I'm cutting contact and holding them accountable for what they did instead of enabling further hurt. 

5) Grow thicker skin. I was always told, when they were shaming, mocking, humiliating me that I was too "thin-skinned. " I was told not to take personally, their very direct attacks on my person. They could offend but I wasn't to take offense. As if doing so was yet another of my failings. I was to feel the hurt, to know that I was being shamed, but not say so. Growing thicker skin wasn't to protect me but to give them a better target. 

But me getting tougher is coming back to bite them. Because now I'm not the pushover, ever willing to "help out" and get kicked for it. The doormat has picked herself up and now they have no one to wipe their feet on. My sympathetic ear is turned deaf and my soft heart has grown colder. My supply of Fs to give has dried up and I refuse to be a human crutch any longer. 

6) Serve God by serving myself. Okay don't hear what I'm not saying here. All my life I was force-fed this notion that waiting on four self-centered people was serving God. But it wasn't. It was pandering to their massive egos. It was worshipping them and putting them as other gods before God. And it was killing me. So now, I'm taking better care of me by not caring too much for them. I still care, but only for people who deserve it. Not people who exploit it and me. Yes I get to make that call. I decide who that is and how I will manifest that care.  

Emotional incest and covert child sexual abuse are the ickiest type of narcissistic parental abuse (warning, raw)

 Hello, dear and lovely people whom I hope I may call friends. I just want to take a sec to thank you for reading this blog. So as you know, it's morphed into a journey of exploration into CPTSD I developed from a life of narcissistic parental abuse. This takes the form of physical, emotional, mental, sexual, spiritual, medical and financial abuse. My four histrionic and narcissistic parents enmeshed with me and took turns endangering, abandoning, exploiting, scapegoating, parentifying, manipulating, triangulating, shaming, invalidating and gaslighting me. 

Today I'm looking at the ickiest, nastiest narcissistic abuse and that's covert sexual abuse and emotional incest. Yeah, I know, we do have to go there and I hate it as much as you do. It makes me physically ill and livid with rage. It's going to be a bitch to write about. 

So overt CSA (child sexual abuse) and incest are horrific. But there are two forms that are possibly even more dangerous emotionally. And they are creepy insidious. And those are emotional molesting and covert incest. One of the worst aspects of covert incest is that you don't even realize it's happening. Because it's "touchless" and undercover, you just accept it as normal if albeit yucky. You assume all kids go through this. Because you've been gaslit into thinking it's normal and grossest of all, that God expects you to provide this service for your parents. 

So what exactly is emotional incest? Well, actually all forms of narcissistic abuse are emotional incest in that the parent parasitically enmeshes with the child, feeds off from them and lives through them. The child lives only for the parent (or in my case, four parents). The parents behave like children and expect their kids to parent and also partner them. They confide in and expect the kid to fix their problems. Blech. 

Covert sexual abuse takes it to another level. The parent confides intimate and personal sexual details with the child. She exposes the child to predators, almost dare I say, like a pimp. It's contactless sexual assault. And it worms its way into your very soul. In my case, my parents had divorced and I was forced to listen to not only my mother's experiences with my father, but with her multiple other partners, beginning around six. 

She got away with this by gaslighting me into believing it was for my own good. That she was just doing her job as a mother to "protect me" from abuse. But it was abusive in itself. These were not just the "facts of life." These were her personal experiences. I did NOT want to hear it and would cover my ears and beg her to stop. But (this is so disgusting) she seemed to take lurid pleasure both in telling me and in my objection to it. 

Being very histrionic she was overtly sexual, seductive and flirty. She dressed like a "hooker" for her singles group Halloween party and had me help with the costume. I was probably the only 8-year-old who knew what a "hooker" was. She would make out with various boyfriends in our kitchen as I got ready for school. She had at least  one affair with a married man twice her age. And she loved to flaunt her body in front of me. I didn't know till I was an adult that very few kids had seen their parents naked on a regular basis. 

And it turned out not to even be protecting but actually weaponizing it against me. She traumatized me to the point of nightmares describing how different men had "molested" her. Yet when the neighbor kid sent me dirty letters telling me he'd like to molest me, she told me to laugh it off and then started dating his father. She left early from "A Clockwork Orange" because supposedly it was so dirty. But then came home and told 9-year-old me the plot in graphic detail.  

She did not defend me when her next boyfriend openly mocked 11-y/o me about the size of my breasts. She laughed along. When they had a foster home, she brought in a teenage boy with a history of predatory behavior who promptly assaulted me his first day there. When I finally got up the gumption to tell her, she was annoyed, not on my behalf but on his because now he'd have to go back to Child Haven. I have never really recovered from that experience. I still feel like a dirty you-know-what a lot of the time. I cry after having intercourse. 

And to extend the prostituting metaphor, she essentially turned our home into a brothel when I was 11. On top of having a foster care home, she moved her boyfriend in and made an "apartment" for them in the basement. I was moved out of my room so my uncle and his girlfriend could play house. One teen in her foster care was given the living room to sleep with her boyfriend. I was left to (illegally) share a room with four special needs kids under 5. I was responsible for all areas of their care, her being two floors down. 

Now,  juxtapose this with her very weirdly strict "Christian" preaching. Yes. She fancied herself a minister through all this. She took us all to church and played the organ. All while living in what her church flatly called bigamy, adultery, immorality and sin. What she herself deemed wickedness in others, was just daily life for me. And all of it interwoven with a steady diet of dangerous people and situations. 

And that's to say nothing of the chaos from my dad. At one point, he, 35 was dating a 17-year-old. I was nine. We'd go to her house and hang out in her bedroom. She had stuffed animals on her bed. Her parents doted on me like I was her sister. It was both heartbreaking and nauseating. And if you  think that wasn't weird in 1973...Let me just say, I didn't even know anyone with divorced parents, let alone a mother with a live-in boyfriend and a dad dating a high schooler. 

So consequently, I lived in constant cognitive dissonance. I have huge gaps in my memory, and especially in the ages of 8 to 12.  But these things I can't forget. I wish I could. I wish I were making these stories up. I wish now that I could have had loving parents. Or at least someone to tell this to. But no one knew. And at the time all I felt was incredible shame. And fear, because to protect these delusions required a lot of gaslighting and a ready scapegoat. And that gaslit scapegoat was me. 

Even now, I feel ashamed of myself as if I was the one behaving so badly.  I dream almost every night that I'm failing under a mountain of crazy expectations and everyone is mad at me. I feel guilty for telling what they did as if the fault lies in my saying it and not in them doing it. I spent one summer trying to talk myself down from suicide, at 11. I shudder when I think how close I came to becoming a statistic. I've kept a lot of people's secrets. 

Which is so ironic because my mother made no secret then of her, for the time, deviant and immoral behavior. I just found out that my mother had even dumped on my friend too, when we were 11.  She must have felt some  kind of judgement because, unprompted, she told my friend that she acted so promiscuous because her parents had been too strict. So basically blaming us all for her behavior. My father not only made no secret of his bizarre behavior, he flaunted it. And then blamed me for being too sensitive and too critical. 

It's taken me six decades just to start coming to terms with all this. It felt gross but I interpreted it that I was gross. I had a lot of nightmares about it (CPTSD), but I was used to ignoring and dismissing how I felt. I tripped over red flags. Yet it never occurred to me that any of this was even inappropriate, let alone disgustingly wrong. They don't call it "covert" incest for nothing. It hides in plain sight. And being perpetrated on gaslit, shamed, blamed child scapegoats, who are afraid of their own shadow, helps keep it hidden. 

Uncovering it has been helped a lot having a husband who is not afraid to call it what it is. Thank God for him. 

Odd parasitic ways narcissist parents enmesh with and pirate their kids' lives

 Hello my friends. Thanksgiving approaches and one thing I'm thankful for this year is that I finally see what happened to me for what it was: narcissistic parental abuse and neglect. I'm grateful to have words for what they did, to be able to put the pain, fear and shame into perspective. As unpleasant as it is, I'm glad I'm no longer ignoring the CPTSD effects of parental abuse (particularly sexual, religious, financial and medical) exploitation, abandonment, endangerment, parentification, scapegoating, invalidation, shaming and gaslighting. 

Probably the most disturbing weapon of narcissistic abuse is one I've not addressed much. However it is integral in bringing off this weird coup that narcissistic parents launch against their kids. And that's enmeshment, which is the destruction of a child's natural boundaries, a hostile takeover of their lives and an exploitation of  their selves for the parent's selfish ends. 

Enmeshed kids don't express wants, needs, feelings and thoughts of our own. Because we didn't know we had them. Because we were indoctrinated into the cult of mom and dad (and in my case their new spouses). We were nothing more than acolytes, temple slaves, vestal virgins, there to serve, to be neither seen nor heard. We don't know where parents stop and we begin. If all this sounds like scary psy-fi, just wait. There's more. And I wish to God it was fiction. Here are bizarre parasitic ways narcissist parents enmesh with their kids and pirate their lives. 

They have Medea syndrome. Narcissistic parents don't just live through us, they devour our selves whole. At birth. Because the narcissist only sees others as extensions of their larger than life selves. People aren't just servants. Servants have lives of their own, if stifled ones. We aren't just owned by them, we are them, just like their arms and legs. We don't exist outside of the narcissist. 

They force us into a parallel universe. We appear from the outside to be separate and extant selves. But the narcissists have killed off any independence in use. They've terrified us into submission. They've laid siege to our identity and personhood. They've shamed us off from any efforts at self-care. They've taken away all means of support. Yet society doesn't see this. They just see us as kinda weird kids but perfectly capable of all things expected of normal kids. People expect us to behave like fully functioning individuals. But we aren't normal kids. Narcissist pirates are at the helm, controlling us remotely with fear, shame and deprivation, even as we go about our days. We are robots programmed to live for narcissist parents. 

They turn us into freak show oddities. We're groomed to grovel and kowtow. They are our organ grinders, and we dance like performing circus monkeys. This makes us perfect targets for creeps.  Our narc parents mock us for behaving weird yet feed off the attention we attract.  See the funny monkey beg. Isn't she ridiculous? 

They cut us off from help and isolate us. We're dependent on them but they are not dependable. Yes, it's terrifying. No, it makes no sense to anyone who has never experienced this. And it doesn't get better. It gets worse as the narcissists get better at manipulation and gaslighting. Is there a way out? Yes. But we have to first recognize what we are, or  have become. 

Demonic and deceitful ways Christian narcissist parents destroy their kids

 Hi friends! I'm working to heal from CPTSD caused by abuse, neglect, endangerment, abandonment, manipulation, exploitation, parentification, triangulation, enmeshment, invalidation, toxic shaming, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all by four narcissistic parents. Today I'm looking at demonic and deceitful ways Christian narcissist parents destroy their kids. 

First, why do I specify Christian narcissist parents? Because Christianity gives them an arsenal of weapons, tailor-made to gaslight kids. Now I understand that sounds very wrong. And it is but not it the way you may think. It's not Jesus, God, the Bible or faith in those things that are wrong.  It's the way Satan twists the narcissist's  understanding of God into what the narcissist already wants to believe, that they aren't subject to God's laws and that they are god-like themselves. Satan then teaches his disciples to weaponize this against their children. 

Did I just call narcissistic parents disciples of the devil? Yes, and very intentionally. And so does God. Because they've made themselves his disciples by putting themselves above God. This is exactly why Lucifer was evicted from heaven. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Including yourself. 

Further, in his word, Our Lord identifies Pharisees who bind others up to expectations they don't help carry as evil-DOERS and hypocrites. They love the sound of their own voices. They are white-washed sepulchers full of death and destruction. He says that not all who call him Lord are actually his followers. Because they say one thing and do another. And because they serve two masters. Sounds pretty much like devil worship to me. 

And the way narcissistic parents do this is super sneaky, just like their master, whom we know is the father of deceit. They use words to paint a false picture of themselves. They do things that APPEAR (operative word) to be following God (read the Bible, preach, go to church). But it's an act. They don't follow up on it. It's all show and no go. It's a lot of word salad designed to baffle, deceive, gaslight and confuse. 

You'll remind me now that no one is perfect and everyone fails occasionally and I will agree. This isn't accidental however. Nor is it occasional. Narcissist parents consistently and blatantly flout God's commands. My parent did the very things they preached against and which God's word says is sin. 

The very fact that my narcissistic parents were so obsessed with "preaching" God's word shows how bass-ackwards it was. They wanted to TELL others how to live their lives not show them. Scripture warns us to be very careful about calling ourselves preachers and teachers. Because, obviously, people are watching our actions and if they don't measure up, it would be better to just keep our mouths shut. 

And if you do it out of pride, because you consider yourself beyond God's reach, above it all, or to hear yourself preach, you're destined for a fall. If you lure, tempt and seduce others to sin, woe to you, God says. All of these things I was forced to watch happening. They weren't shy or embarrassed by their behavior. They never apologized and later lied about ever doing it. 

Narcissist parents are the very worst type of hypocrite. They don't love God or other people. They love themselves. They are arrogance on crack. They treat their children like extensions of themselves. I was servant, surrogate parent, surrogate spouse and scapegoat to my parents and their new spouses. I was not allowed to have thoughts and feelings. Needs and wants didn't get met. I was supposed meet their needs (which were mostly wants). Scripture didn't apply to them, only  me. They went out of their way to do the very things they preached against. They made me feel guilty and responsible. And they gaslit me into thinking this was all God's will. 

The reason Christian narcissist parents are so successful at deceiving their kids, the reason children swallow this bullshit hook, line and sinker, is the unique place parents hold in their lives. They are, in a sense, God to their children. They are the first image of Him that little ones see. That's why the Bible is so adamant about not leading a child astray. 

And if the first God voice we hear is lying, tricking, undermining, mocking, conniving, shaming we believe it the same as if it were loving, caring and nurturing. In fact, it goes even deeper than belief which is on some level choice. I have, as an adult, chosen to believe that God loves me. Even though as a child, I didn't feel loved and was not cared for at all. 

This thing that kids develop when raised by narcissists is a core autonomic response, an instinct or kneejerk reaction. It's fear, shame, misery, self-loathing, hurt plus other terrible things all rolled into one. It's a sick knowledge that God loves everyone but us. That we are so far gone he's given up. Even though I know with my frontal lobe it's not true, it's somehow ingrained in my deep root brain. I have to fight it constantly. I don't think there is actually a word for this devilish evil that narcissist parents embed in us. But they certainly do a great job training us up in it and departing from it next to impossible to do. 

The most controversial way I'm healing from CPTSD caused by narcissitic parental abuse

Hey my friends. Rereading yesterday's post about odd and surprising ways to heal from CPTSD caused from childhood trauma, I realized I missed the oddest, most controversial but surprisingly most healing, one of all. And this is going to cause some raised eyebrows and questioning. But it seems to fly in the face of scripture, God's will and Christian teaching. Seems being the operative word. 

And that way is by getting mad and staying mad at the perpetrators of narcissistic abuse and at the abuse itself. Now I know, if you're steeping in conventional wisdom about God's plan, you'll be waving your hands and saying "no, no, Mar! Anger is wrong!" And certain kinds are. So are certain behaviors we do when in anger. Such as the vicious, selfish, exploitative, abusive anger wreaked on me in various ways by four covert, grandiose and malignant narcissistic parents. That was wrong. This is different. 

And if you've never been abused by a self-centered parent, I'm glad for you. You have learned that God is love. You've felt loved, wanted and cared for. Maybe not always but for the most part. I didn't. Scripture was weaponized against me by my parents to dehumanize me and aggrandize themselves. But even those who see God as loving are misreading scripture. 

God doesn't say don't be angry. He himself was angry. He says don't SIN in your anger. And that's where the anger I was subjected to and the anger I must feel about that part company. My anger is righteous, theirs is self-righteous. I'm not sinning in my anger. It's helping me to stop sinning by quitting hating myself and beginning to love myself. To stop enabling this demonic abuse, neglect, abandonment, exploitation, endangerment, scapegoating and shaming of  me. This is me clearing the temple of money-changers who are desecrating my Heavenly Father's house. 

My self-absorbed parents were sinning, arrogantly, bombastically and blatantly. Yet they believed themselves fully qualified to preach to others how to live their lives. Which translated to a lot of shaming of their listeners. They bound others up to burdens they didn't carry. They were hypocrite pharisees. They loudly and proudly talk the Christian talk (in a weird,  wrong and twisted way) but don't walk it. 

My father used to routinely tell me that he would be committing suicide at some point. STARTING WHEN I WAS 5. This was while he was missioning to others about the "good news" of salvation. (?!?!)I would cry and beg him not to (jolt of narcissistic supply for him) He would coldly and cruelly keep twisting the knife till I stopped reacting and just went numb. Because that's what he seemed to want. And then he shamed me for being unfeeling toward him. 

And then when I was an adult, I, not surprisingly, struggled with similar demons. However I fought them instead of exploiting them as he did. I, stupidly I see now, reached out to him for help. I foolishly thought he'd feel sad that his little girl was hurting so. But when I told him how I was battling suicidal thoughts, he suggested that maybe I should just end it all. And I realized that it was never about me. It was always The Jack Show. And that he would see me dead and never bat an eyelash. 

My mother ran "good news" clubs for kids (which never happened) while cheating on my dad, leaving me alone to fend for myself and putting me in the path of dangerous people. She ran a foster care home which turned out to be more of a brothel. And left me to care for all of the kids alone. But still played the organ in church. In 1974, this was not only immoral and illegal, it was completely countercultural. No other kid I knew lived anything like this. If my extended family knew, they'd have been horrified. But no one bothered to find out and I never told them. 

These are just two of the countless freaky things they did to me. I lived in this disturbing parallel universe in one way or another, all my life with them. I was subjected to very weird things other kids couldn't even dream of. They were always scapegoating and gaslighting me about it. So I faked it was all good, buried the shame deep and just powered on. And was shoved further and further down the rabbit hole of misery. I can virtually guarantee that no other kid has a backstory as unusual as mine. 

Till I finally began to take my hands off my eyes and realize how bad it really was. And how messed up my mind was. And this brings us to the anger which I now must feel. I have to stop feeling anger and hatred  toward myself. It wasn't my fault. It was theirs. I didn't bring this on myself. They did. I had all the obligation to them and they believed they had none to me. 

Because my life was so flip-flopped from what was normal. my way out will look different too. Because no one took care of me, and I had to care for them, I have to reverse that  and start caring for me and stop enabling them. And that's where the anger comes in. I have to get angry for the little girl left behind in Alaska, made to wait on strangers my parents brought into the house, left out and  yet put in the middle of it all. I need to get furious that a little kid didn't even get enough to eat or a bed. 

And that's where my healing begins. It's only when I can see how wrong this is that I will be able to fumigate the gaslighting, or actually gassing of my brain. I need to stop  tolerating, excusing and taking the blame on myself. And it's God who has made me see all this. 

So if my way looks different or sounds "wrong" don't judge. You haven't walked in my shoes. If anyone's road to healing makes you uncomfortable, take a look in the mirror. Ask yourself why. Why would you find fault with and not encourage them to get better? Are you defending perpetrators and shaming the victim? If so, shoo, be off, flying monkey. 

Believe me, you could never gaslight or shame me any more than I've been gaslit and shamed already. You could never hurt me more than I've  hurt myself. It needs to end here or I'll drown in despair. And I am pretty sure God doesn't want that. I think that He is angry on my behalf. I don't think He likes how they treated me. 

So I need to get angry on my behalf and on behalf of the little girl whom every stood by as she was wounded. Will I sin in my anger? Possibly. I'm human, not perfect. But I'm less likely to sin as much as I was sinned against. Not like Lear, but like the lamb who knows what it feels like and could never be as viciously angry as those who were angry at her. And which caused me to have to step outside me comfort zone and be angry. At people who made me angry in the first place. Lead not your children to wrath, scripture says. 

Odd and surprising ways to counteract narcissistic parent abuse

 Hi guys. It' me with more on working to heal from narcissistic parental abuse. I was abused emotionally, physically, mentally, sexually, financially, medically and religiously. I was both neglected and exploited, manipulated and invalidated, abandoned and endangered, scapegoated and marginalized and gaslit about it all by four narcissistic parents. For nearly six decades I didn't even see let alone work to heal it. Now that I have seen, I'm relooking at everything that happened. Every time I do, I see that it was much worse than I thought. I'm beginning to understand how I was brainwashed and gaslit to think it fine, or my fault or that I was oversensitive. 

And since the childhood trauma was so exaggerated and the CPTSD has gotten so bad, I'm going to have to take extreme measures to heal it. Desperate times call for desperate measures. With that in mind, here are some odd, surprising ways to counteract and heal from narcissistic parental abuse. Some might even shock you because we've always been taught they were wrong or bad. 

Fight back! I'm not fighting the narcissists. Two are deceased and with the other two it wouldn't be worth the effort. They've had decades of practice in humiliation, invalidation, manipulation, triangulation, exploitation and gaslighting. Lying and hurting come naturally to them. What I'm battling are the demons they've implanted in my brain. And I'm going to need every tool of spiritual warfare for this epic battle (prayer, scripture guidance, and St. Michael's intercession, plus the armor of God). 

Shout at the devil. I will not listen to the voice of evil, prompting me to hate myself. In my parents' voices, he's told me to end it all. Not because I'd be better off dead. Because everyone else would be better off without wicked little me. That's not God, like they said it was. It's demonic. 

Listen to God. Obviously? you're thinking.  Well, for me it's not so obvious. Because all my life, I've listened to what I thought was God and was really Satan speaking through my four self-centered, manipulative parents. He was always goading, shaming, twisting and deceiving me. But I'm a big girl now and I can read scripture and talk to God Himself. Every time I do, I see more wrong things I was taught. 

Go no contact. I'm not going to subject myself to one more of their random act of violence toward me. No more ambushes or drive-bys. No more weird, gaslighty, bizarre interactions that leave me miserable. I'm declining invitations to the self-pity parties. The mind games and power plays stop here. 

Quit forgiving and start accepting. What is forgiveness anyway? Well, narcissist parents would say it's something I had to do for them. Even thought they weren't sorry and believed they'd done nothing wrong. So word salad-y. We can hurt you and not be sorry but you have to forgive it? Oh and you must also be perfect. God says. But forgiveness isn't their carte blanche to keep hurting. It's simply aceepting that the past is never going to be any different than it was. And that I can do. Which leads me to the next thing. 

Read my Bible. Uh, again, you're saying, duh? But it wasn't that easy for me. Scripture was weaponized against me till I grew to dread and hate the Bible. They twisted it so that everything they did was perfectly fine and everything I did was wrong. But every time I read scripture I see how messed up that was. So I'm starting to...

Call them out. Maybe not to them in person because they are dangerous narcissists. But in my  head and on this blog. They have always proclaimed to preach scripture. My mom just posted on Facebook how "hell is still hot" so everyone better get their acts together. While she has consistently lied about every single thing she has ever done and not just to me but throughout their lives. My parents and stepparents blatantly broke the commandments, ignored the words of Jesus, rejected what they didn't like, gave their pet sins protected status and flouted God's word. And I defended them, excused their behavior and absorbed, like the good little scapegoat I was, every bad thing they did. Pretty soon I believed that it wasn't them at fault but me. So I'm going to...

Stop taking their sins on me. They'll need to start looking to Jesus for that because it's not my job. I was blamed for their bad choices, hurtful behavior and willful disobedience. They said I was both too sensitive (to their hurtful behavior ) and too critical if I confronted or just seemed not on board with all the crazy they put me through. But that's not true. I wasn't the one committing adultery, stealing, lying, cheating, exploiting, and hurting children. If they don't stop preaching and start practicing, it will be too late. But that's still not my responsibility. They can come to Jesus or not. Because I...

Quit enabling. No more making excuses. She didn't mean to. He meant well. She's old and senile. She can't help it. I misunderstood them, bad me. That stops now. I can't stand idly by and let them get away with it. God is calling them to repentance and if I keep letting them scapegoat me, He can't get through. I can't stop it but I can stop me feeling guilt and shame over someone else's behavior. I'm going to...

Stay in my own lane. I'm going to do me and stop trying to be and do for them. They were never there for me as  a kid except to take advantage of me. I was always there parenting them, even as a tiny girl. So I need to be there for me. If I don't' I'll drown in the despair they inbred in me. So I will

Swim out of this shame riptide and toward the harbor of God's love. He's there. In fact, he's rescue swimming with me. Will they get there? I can't worry about that. I hope so. But there's nothing I'm going to do about it. Been there, couldn't fix that. I'm not body-blocking anymore. Even if they want to talk about it. I'm going to...

Stop giving so many chances to hurt. Their need to unburden their souls doesn't constitute any obligation on my part. Any talk we have ends up in pity parties, shame fests, scream-a-thons,  lying, gaslighting, "forgetting" what they did to me, exaggerations of their victimhood.  I end up playing toxic waste dump and more confused and hurt. So I'm going to...  

Do what's best for me. And that is NOT to have more contact.  Been there and have the scars to prove it. So maybe that won't happen. Maybe they really will be sorry. Maybe I'm disobeying God by withholding my help. I'll take that up with Him. Thus far, He's given every sign that working on my  healing is His plan for me. And since my parents were the ones causing me to need healing, staying away seems the best idea. 

Disturbing symptoms of childhood trauma from narcissistic parental abuse

 Hi friends. I'm working to sort out CPTSD from decades of parental abuse, neglect, abandonment, endangerment, invalidation, manipulation, triangulation, exploitation, parentification, shaming, family scapegoating and gaslighting by four narcissistic parents. Today I'm sharing disturbing and frightening symptoms of childhood trauma that persist in adulthood. 

Twisted body and face: I stand crooked, smile crookedly and just look bent. This is from years of staying small and crouched from deflecting verbal and physical blows. It's from sleeping in cramped, cold conditions. It's from keeping a smile which has become a grimace, pasted on my face. It's from gritting my teeth to stop hunger, cold, fear and shame. It's from biting my tongue too much. From being on jump ready to comply to their every command. It's from the physical effort of keeping pain and suffering, humiliation and shame squashed inside. It's from clamping my jaws together so as not to say anything especially not something that might set them off. It's squinting from years of neglected eye care. It's from staying frozen. And from too much parent-inflicted hurt.  

Confusion, fugue, dissociation: Brain damage from years of needless stress and chaos released floods of cortisol and adrenaline which have corroded my brain. I'm always in a fog. My brain works in spurts and so my thoughts get easily jumbled. I mentally edit and re-edit everything I say just in case it offends someone. Because the slightest thing always did. I can't even write a full word without shaking and fritzing. 

Easily wearied: I carried the weight of four narcissistic parents, their five kids and assorted people in their foster care homes. I was servant, surrogate parent, surrogate spouse and scapegoat. So now, the simplest of tasks exhaust me. 

Constant pain: Bearing adults' burdens from childhood, performing tasks that were too heavy and demanding, being deprived of basic care requirements have left me with pain everywhere. Back, neck, jaw, hands, feet, hips, headaches, ulcer, even sinus. My skin is damaged from autoimmune problems brought on by a depleted immune system. 

Speech problems: I lisp, stutter and often can't put two words together, let alone form sentences. Having to be on guard not to upset my mother and her husband, my dad and his wife or any of their children, plus having to anticipate their every need,  has made me hypervigilant.  And paranoid. 

Over-taxed limbic system. I'm jumpy. I start at every noise because it might be and usually was, danger. I was terrified, still am, of balloons, thunder, drums, explosions, guns, fireworks and other loud noises. They paralyze me. This is CPTSD. 

Damaged reflexes. My drained nervous system has made me clumsy. My over-activated stress response from years of narcissistic parents' manufactured crises, have left me unable to respond promptly to real problems. 

Poor coordination: Years of hopping through ever-changing narcissistic parents' hoops, from falling under too big a load, have crippled me and made me clumsy. 

Nightmares: from decades of bad memories vying for attention I always denied them. I'm always expected to do many things at once by demanding, implacable people. I don't know what it is or how to do it. I have to cook, clean, care for kids, teach school, drive people places. It's so overwhelming. I have more dream memories that actual memories. 

Sleep problems: I fall asleep everywhere and then can't fall asleep when I should. You can see the heaviness in my eyes even as a kid. I can remember maybe five times in my life when I slept soundly through the night. I haven't awakened refreshed in decades. Even as young child, I had to drag myself out of bed.